You may hear the plot to this movie and think to yourself “a bear does cocaine and then kills a bunch of people, who comes up with this tomfoolery” but this movie’s premise is actually based on a true story—kind of. According to Esquire Magazine, back in 1985 drug smugglers accidentally lost forty containers of cocaine in the Tennessee wilderness and it wasn’t until two months later when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation found a dead black bear in the woods. Dr. Kenneth Alonso, Georgia’s chief medical examiner at the time, examined the body that the case was cracked (all puns intended). Upon examination it was determined that the bear had consumed a ludicrous 75 pounds of cocaine!
Elizabeth Banks has been a longtime comedy star as an actress for her roles in Wet Hot American Summer, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and more recently the Pitch Perfect trilogy which she not only starred in but also sat in the director’s chair for the second film back in 2015. Since her success as a director, Banks has gone onto write and direct the revamped Charlie’s Angels in 2019 which earned modest reviews before getting tapped to direct a new fun horror-comedy which stars and was dedicated to the late great Ray Liotta.
Luckily for the audience, the story is not that boring. Instead, Banks rewrites history, and has this black bear go rouge while intersecting some lighthearted stories in the backdrop. Keri Russell plays an overworked single mom who has run out of work to find her daughter and her friend in the woods as they pick the worst possible day to play hooky from the second grade. Ray Liotta plays the money-hungry drug boss, who sends his son Kristofer and his right-hand man Howard, played by O’Shea Jackson into the woods to retrieve his loot. Lastly Margo Martindale and Jesse Tyler Ferguson play the goofy Park Rangers who have had no crisis training whatsoever. On Saturday night, there were more people watching Cocaine Bear at my theater than Ant-Man which might prove my point right from last week that audience members are growing “stale” of the Marvel franchise. Typically, a movie like Cocaine Bear attracts only a niche audience of people like me who enjoy twisted and dark humor, but this past weekend all the primetime showings of Cocaine Bear were sold out. Part of that could have been because this film was marketed and promoted as Ray Liotta’s last film, but I believe many people are checking out Cocaine Bear because they like how this fun ensemble cast doesn’t take themselves too seriously. And in a world with so much craziness going on, I think people can relax and enjoy some laughs in this 80s driven cocaine fueled comedy.
